Sixteen Volts

Since my wife is finally watching the taped last episodes of Galactica (a show that for some reason I am not that interested in even though I really should be), allow me sign off for the week by firing a few random thoughts off the top of my head. You see, I have to disappoint all Ilkkaheads out there by saying I will be quite busy for the whole next week, so there probably won't be any new posts in this blog until Saturday! To help you get through this forced withdrawal, go read the archives or visit the other fine blogs that are listed in the sidebar. Besides, getting rid of the habit also helps my readers enjoy the future posts more.

Last night, I flipped around the channels to watch a few scenes of "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid". I had forgotten how funny this movie was, and I should watch it again, since the first time I watched it I was so young and media illiterate that I didn't even realize that the film is intercut with clips from old film noir movies. For the next summer's movie season, some studio could make a similar movie that is a homage to 80's action movies, with film clips from the classics of that era including "Hard to Kill", "Cobra" and "Road House" somehow edited into the action. Modern computer graphics and visual effects should make the result totally seamless.

Elsewhere, in the comments of the post "Lazy White Male Nannies", when the fellow Finn Tuomas is scolded for the fact that he dares to criticize feminist hypocrisy without proper understanding what the complex social sciences have to say about the issue at hand, he drops by far the best, almost Danimalian one-liner that I have seen anywhere for a really, really long time:

Only thing complex about social science seems to be the sophistry required to redefine everything as being the fault of white men.

I recently came upon the Advice Goddess site. I have no idea why I never heard of this site before, since it is so delightful to see a female advice columnist who is not stupud. For example, the post "Research And You Will Find" illustrates a few modern findings in the social sciences. For example, the fact that the stereotype about young women with lower-back tattoos is true. (But then again, aren't all stereotypes pretty much true, which is why certain people are so opposed to them?) Some other posts in this site that we should notice are "Keeping Up With Robert Frank" and "White People Are Eeeee-Vil!" And once again, this was only the front page!

Suze Orman is another well-known agony aunt on radio and TV who specializes in finance. My wife likes her, but I tend to find her somewhat off-putting. For example, a few nights ago she adviced a female caller that she should not be the support of her new husband who turned out to be in debt. Funny, I thought that that was what the institution of marriage was for. Dr. Laura would have probably given the caller somewhat different advice. Another call the same night was pretty amusing, though. A male caller in his forties had his financial house well in order, with a net worth of well over a million and an income of $150K a year, but his girlfriend's business was failing and she was knee-deep in debt. In the middle of this call, it turned out that his girlfriend had now become pregnant. I guess you could say that she really "took the initiative" in solving her financial problems.

Meanwhile, in her post "There are no biological differences whatsoever between men and women", the Russo-American transplant in Finland Vera (who is also an occasional commenter at my blog) reminisces of her scientific education in a manner that tends to confirm my well-known suspicions about the intellectual ranking of the students in various academic fields:

Anyway, we were talking about education with Sophia and Jenny yesterday (they have both just graduated from college, Sophia in biology and biochemistry and Jenny in mathematics) and it turned out that the things have changed a bit since my times: nowadays you have to take normal humanities and social studies classes for your distribution requirements, but in science they have special dumbed-down science-for-morons classes that humanities and social studies students can take for their distribution requirements, but science majors are not allowed to take for credit.

The finest moment of the higher education conversation came when Sophia remembered the women's studies class she took for the social studies requirement. The teacher started the class saying "There are no biological differences whatsoever between men and women". Being a biologist, Sophia wanted to correct her, but then she figured that if the teacher still does not know any differences while being in her fifties, it's better not to tell her, she might get upset or something.

Phil at "Finland for Thought" is another American living and working in Finland, and his observations about the follies and foibles of our culture are also worth reading. In the post "Should I start investing in tattoo-removal companies?", Phil has observed that tattoos don't really look attractive on women. In the post "Ever seen anyone over the age of 18 working at McDonald’s in Finland?", Phil makes another observation about the cultural differences between the large and powerful America and small and humble Finland. Another good question that he asks is "Why are leftist ideologies named after people?"

The best way to understand leftists is to remember that leftism is really a religion. It would therefore make sense to ask if the other trappings of religion are present in their organization. For example, the Catholic Church has historically employed scores of "Brides of Christ" to do its grunt work and disseminate and enforce ideology among the troops, but the modern political left doesn't really have a similar women's auxiliary. Or does it? Don't the radical feminists already work in a similar role as something that we might call "Brides of Stalin"? By taking even a cursory look at these women, eerie similarities between them and the Catholic nuns immidiately pop up by the dozen. For starters, the vows of poverty and nonmarriage seem to come very naturally for these women, practically without any conscious efforts, and just like their God-fearing sisters in penguin costumes, these women have a very puritanical attitude towards the individual freedoms of other people. Both groups especially consider the normal heterosexuality of males to be something that should be violently suppressed. Of course, one important difference is that instead of practicing total chastity, the brides of Stalin provide free sex for their underclass brothers in arms, the exciting bad boys, and this way both fight the patriarchal and oppressive institution of monogamous marriage and help keep up the troop morale at the same time!

I really think that I have found something in this observation, so I have to keep thinking about it more. Perhaps my readers could offer their observations about the similarities between these groups. I recall reading that women had a leading role in both the religious awakenings in the 19th century Finland and later in the stalinist activism of the 1970's. Perhaps there is something in this that just suits the female temper.

I added "Half Sigma" to my blogroll, since of all blogs that I have ever seen, I think this one ideologically and stylistically resembles me the most. I also deleted some blogs that I don't read that much. I don't play any silly games "I will link to you if you link to me" with my linking and blogroll: I simply link to the sites that I actually read and consider to be good. If anybody wants to link to me or not link to me, that is strictly their business. Speaking of links, Half Sigma links to "Bulletproof Pimp", which looks quite interesting.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Sunday, June 11, 2006 at 4:53 PM